Right now, Cole was inside that room with his lawyer, forced to answer Finn’s questions, and instead of being by his side, she was out in the hall like the bad cop asked to leave the premises.
Her stomach clenched. Her promise to Finn had overruled her relationship with Cole. Maybe Cole was right and she should have recused herself from the case.
Her mind continued to race, a carousel of emotions spinning around until she could barely function. When footsteps sounded from the end of the corridor, she jerked her head up, frowning at the unfamiliar man advancing toward the door of the interrogation room. He wore a pair of thick black glasses and had a brown file folder tucked under his arm. Acknowledging her with a nod, he knocked on the door and waited.
When Finn stepped out into the hall, the new arrival handed him the file, then shot a dubious glance at Jamie.
“You can speak freely, Tom,” Finn said. “Jamie’s with the FBI.”
“Oh. All right.” The man shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “The gun is clean. Not even a partial print.”
Finn didn’t look surprised. “That’s what I figured. Anything else?”
“The serial number was filed off, so it will be impossible to trace, but I took some digital pictures of it. You can have your deputy send them to Raleigh, maybe the folks there can gauge where it might have come from, but I warn you, there aren’t any distinguishable marks on the piece.”
Finn’s knuckles tightened over the edge of the folder. “Wonderful. Then we’ve got no leg to stand on.” He shot Jamie a grave look. “We can’t hold him.”
She nodded numbly. She wasn’t surprised by the forensic tech’s findings either.
“It could still be him,” Tom the tech offered, evidently mistaking her reaction for disappointment. “He probably just wiped the gun before dumping it.”
Jamie’s lips tightened, but she didn’t object. Sure, maybe Cole had wiped the gun. If he was the killer.
But every fiber of her being told her that Cole was innocent.
Yet she’d interrogated him like a common criminal…
You did your job!
She clung to that, the reminder that she was a professional first and always had been. She might have fallen for Cole— God, hadn’t that realization come out of left field?—but she was still a federal agent, and if he cared about her like he claimed, then he needed to understand that her job was important to her. It defined her.
“I’ll be in the lab if you need me,” Tom spoke up. He shook the sheriff’s hand, gave Jamie a timid smile, then walked off.
“I can’t keep this from them,” Finn said, holding up the folder.
“I’ll wait here,” she murmured.
Finn disappeared into the interrogation room, and less than two minutes later the door flew open again with a loud thud. A man in his forties stepped out first, boasting a head of silver hair, hawklike features and a scowl. Cole came out next and Jamie’s heart ached at the sight of his lifeless expression.
“Cole,” she blurted out.
He didn’t even spare her a look. “Come on, Martin, let’s head over to the house so we can discuss this.”
Jamie’s face collapsed. As client and attorney whisked off, she stared at Cole’s back, the proud set of his shoulders, the dark hair gleaming under the fluorescent lights in the hall. She wanted to go after him but her feet were rooted in place.
“That was unnecessarily harsh,” Finn remarked, disapproval ringing in his tone.
Jamie couldn’t even voice her agreement. Her throat was too tight, a vise of anger clamped around it. How could Cole blow her off like that, as if she were nothing more than a casual acquaintance he’d run into on the street?
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Finn asked. “Go after the jerk.”
Snapping out of her turbulent thoughts, she curled her hands into fists and hurried after Cole. She caught up to him and his attorney just as they were reaching the front lobby, and when she called out Cole’s name his entire body went as rigid as a board. He muttered something to his lawyer and the other man nodded and exited the police station.
Looking as if he’d rather be just about anywhere else, Cole strode toward her with a frown. “What is it, Jamie?”
Her nostrils flared. “Really? That’s how you’re going to handle this? By leaving?”
“There’s nothing to handle. You made it clear where you stood back in that interrogation room.”
“Enlighten me then. Where do I stand, Cole?”
“You’re more concerned about your job than you are about us,” he said flatly.
“That’s not true,” she protested. “I told you why I had to ask those questions. It wasn’t personal, damn it.”
“Wasn’t personal?” he echoed in disbelief. “Everything about this is personal! You’ve been staying at my house, sharing my bed—how is that not personal?”